Video - The History of Hindu India (Part 1)

The History of Hindu India (Part 1)

The History of Hindu India (Part 1)

With English Subtitles

The History of Hindu India (Part One, with English Subtitles) was developed by the editors of Hinduism Today magazine in collaboration with Dr. Shiva Bajpai, Professor Emeritus of History, California State University Northridge. It is intended to provide an authentic presentation of the history of India and Hinduism for use in American 6th grade social study classes, as well as Hindu temple study groups and general presentations on the Hindu religion and history. The documentary is based on the first chapter of the textbook, The History of Hindu India, published in 2011. For more information and for class lesson plans based on the book visit www.hinduismtoday.com/education/. Funded by the Uberoi Foundation, Institute for Curriculum Advancement. May be freely distributed for educational purposes.

Directed and Produced by Sushma Khadepaun. Produced and Narrated by Roger (Raj) Narayan.

See our Hindu History page for links to this movie with other subtitles and printed publications.

Transcript:

Hi. My name is Raj Narayan and I’m going to talk about Hindu history, beliefs and culture.

Hinduism is the oldest living religion in the world and the third largest.

More than one billion Hindus live in 150 different countries, mostly in India.

The United States alone is home to over two million Hindus.

Origins of Hinduism.

To find the distant beginnings of Hinduism we have to go back over 6,000 years...

... to the Sarasvati-Indus region of the Indian subcontinent.

This vast area extends from Sri Lanka in the south to the Himalayan Mountains in the north...

... from the Arabian sea in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the east.

The Sarasvati–Indus civilization developed here, eventually becoming the world’s largest and most advanced...

... surpassing even those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and China.

The civilization is named after the area’s two great river systems, the Sarasvati and the Indus.

It is called the Vedic culture after the earliest Hindu sacred text.

It is also known as the Harappan culture, after the site of its first discovery in 1920.

This was an urban society centered around many highly organized cities,

some with populations of 80,000, which was rare in those days.

The cities were connected by trade routes, which extended west to Mesopotamia, and east to central Asia.

Five thousand years later archeologists discovered pottery,

seals,

statues,

beads,

jewelry,

tools,

toys,

miniature carts

and dice,

all of which hint at what life was like at the source of the civilization that has evolved into modern-day India.

The flat, stone seals have writing on them and images of Deities, ceremonies, symbols, people, plants and animals.

Even though writing was widespread among the people, we have not deciphered it yet.

From these artifacts we learn that certain religious and cultural practices were identical to those followed by Hindus today.

One seal shows a meditating figure that scholars link to Lord Siva,

while others show the lotus posture used today in hatha yoga.

Other discoveries connect the far past with today, including swastikas,

statues of the Mother Goddess,

worship of the Siva Lingam

fire altars that show the ceremonial practice of Vedic people who were also known as Aryans,

sacred baths,

priests,

sacred animals

and symbolism in the performing arts.

You must be familiar with the traditional greeting namaste.

Here is a small clay statue portraying the same.

And this statue shows a woman with red powder in the part of her hair.

Married women even today observe this same custom.

As the Sarasvati-Indus culture declined when the river dried up around 2,000 bce.,many people migrated to more fertile places...

... in eastern & central India, especially along the river Ganga and also beyond the subcontinent.

Hindu Scriptures.

The four Vedas, the central holy books of Hinduism, were composed in Sanskrit starting at least 6,000 years ago.

The Rig Veda, the earliest of the four, speaks repeatedly of the Sarasvati ...

... describing it as the most mighty of rivers, flowing from the Himalayan mountains to the sea.

Thus, we know that a large part of this sacred text was composed well before 2000 bce—by which time the river had dried up.